Take Executive Action On Gun Control

“I’ll give you my TOW anti-tank missile when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.”

Cockroaches More Popular Than Congress

New poll shows Libertarians and Teabaggers succeeding in undermining government

A House Built On Sandy

breezy-pointBreezy Point, Queens, after Superstorm Sandy blew through.

With urgently needed relief for the victims of Superstorm Sandy ignored for over two months by the Rethug led 112th House of Representatives , the 113th sworn in this week managed to pass just $9.7 billion of the $60 billion the Democrat led Senate had already approved, with 67 Rethugs voting no.

In contrast, $62 billion worth of relief for Hurricane Katrina was signed into law within 4 days from the time it first made landfall. Even so, it took a firestorm of protest from such conservative stalwarts as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Rep. Steve King (R-NY)  to force a vote. King went so far as to threaten switching parties if Speaker John Boehner didn’t immediately put it on the floor. Da Boner has promised to schedule a supplemental authorization  by Jan 15.

So, what’s been the holdup? A combination of resistance from the likes of David Koch‘s American For Progress, who object to the whole notion of the social compact and the costs of being our brother’s keeper when the need arises;  and a hypocritical regional, red state  prejudice against the liberal Northeast. Lee Fang from The Nation explains the Koch connection:

Billionaire David Koch’s prime political organization, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), having failed in its $125 million quest to oust President Barack Obama, is now aiming at a slightly less sophisticated political target: victims of Hurricane Sandy. Hurricane Sandy was the second most costly in American history, leaving 100 lives lost, over $50 billion in devastation and tens of thousands of damaged or destroyed homes. Legislative efforts to help those who survived Hurricane Sandy’s wrath will reach a major stumbling block.

Earlier this week, AFP, which is chaired by Koch and believed to be financed by several other plutocrats from the New York City region, released a letter warning members of Congress not to vote for the proposed federal aid package for victims of the storm that swept New Jersey, New York City and much of the surrounding area in October. An announcement on the group’s website says that the vote next week for the Sandy aid package will be a “key vote”—meaning senators who support sending money for reconstruction could face an avalanche of attack ads in their next election. Already, opposition to the bill is growing, although it passed one procedural hurdle last night. There is some legitimate criticism with aspects of the legislation, including the fact that some of the money will go to non-Sandy related reconstruction efforts in disaster areas.

For AFP, however, the whole bill must die and victims of the storm deserve no help from the government. Koch’s top deputy in New Jersey, a surly gentleman named Steve Lonegan, who heads the local AFP state chapter, called the aid package a “disgrace.” “This is not a federal government responsibility,” Lonegan told reporters. “We need to suck it up and be responsible for taking care of ourselves.”

Easy to say when the guy who signs your paycheck is worth over $30 billion. Crooks and Liars addresses the redneck issue:

Rep. Rush Holt came to the floor and said what many are thinking: They dropped the ball because the disaster happened in a blue state. He’s not the only one to think so:

Jamil Smith@JamilSmith Wonder if the House would adjourn without even voting on Hurricane #Sandy relief if it had hit red states the hardest. Having my doubts.

This could possibly be the most despicable non-act of Congress ever. Howie Klein has more on one of the tea party idiots in New Jersey who is probably dancing a jig right now:

Among the Koch whores in the House GOP threatening to disrupt the aid are right-wing hacks in New York (like Staten Island’s corrupt Mafia-related Michael “Mikey Suits” Grimm) and New Jersey’s worst extremist ideologue Scott Garrett. Long Island Congressman Peter King, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, which has been handling the bill, is worried that if the money doesn’t get approved while he’s still chair, Texas hate-monger Michael McCaul— the richest member of the House and an anti-tax fanatic— will kill it. Many Republicans still fighting the Civil War look at this as an opportunity to deal a painful blow to the hated Northerners.

Which would be a fitting postscript to the movie Lincoln. And tying the two objections together, Fang continues:

It seems particularly cruel that the Koch political machine would use its vast network of paid activists and professional operatives to kill this bill. For one thing, this is David Koch’s community. From his Upper East Side apartment, Koch lives only a subway ride away from the devastation in Red Hook. Notably, Koch’s group gave away free gasoline during the election in a wide-scale anti-Obama stunt, yet  had nothing to give to the victims of the storm. Now, Koch, one of the richest men in the world, is actually trying to take something away from them.

[…]

The other tragedy of Koch’s decision to target Sandy aid is that his company is one reason we will increasingly face extreme weather events like hurricanes, flash floods, droughts and fierce storms. The Koch brothers, David and Charles, sit atop one of the world’s largest privately held conglomerates. Koch Industries is a sprawling company with interests in commodity speculation, timber, oil refining, ethanol production, chemicals, pipelines, consumer products, and fertilizer, among others. The Koch empire, by one estimate, has an annual carbon footprint of 100 million tons. Not only does Koch’s business contribute to climate change through massive carbon emissions, as Greenpeace reported, Koch is the largest financier of climate denial political organizations and media groups. (As an aside, unlike AFP, Greenpeace ignored partisan politics and sent many of its workers to Queens to assist with relief efforts.)

And lest we forget, during the primary debates Willard called for the elimination and privitization of FEMA:

In sum, Willard argues it’s immoral to saddle our children with the bill for restoring the infrastructure that they will have to depend on. Better to leave them with this.

sandy subway

 

Grover In Wonderland

Grover sized

WRT to the so-called fiscal cliff negotiations, President Obama, as expected, caved on his many promises to draw the line of tax increases at $200-250k, settling for $400-450k. This has the effect of reducing his initial position of raising $1.6 trillion in new revenues to a mere $620 billion. The difference will likely be made up in even further cuts to discretionary spending, including an already weakened social safety net, though Obama made some vague promises to offset some of the difference by closing some tax loophole and other exemptions.

While in the short run the Obama Administration won some significant concessions on issues like extended unemployment insurance, green energy tax credits (at the price of extending subsidies for the fossil fuel extraction industry), and patching the Alternative Minimum Tax loophole (that was starting to sweep more and more of the middle class into its grasp because it wasn’t originally indexed to inflation), he has substantially weakened his future negotiating position with the Rethugs by not insisting that the debt limit be extended permanently.

This latter development sets up a replay of hostage taking strategy that the Rethugs used so effectively in 2011. While Obama has stated in no uncertain terms that he wouldn’t entertain negotiations on the issue, he hardly has the negotiating cred to convince anyone that he won’t fold on that issue as he has on so many others. (I heard today a spokesman for Patriotic Millionaires, who have lobbied for higher taxes on individuals in his income class, say that Obama was the worst presidential negotiator evah.)

That said, the bottom line on the income tax issue for Rethugs is that because they agreed to higher income taxes (if only on the top 0.016%), it represents a clear break with the vaunted Grover Norquist no tax increases ever pledge. Nonetheless, as a leader in the Grand Old Denial Party, Grover tried to spin the defeat, saying:

“The Bush tax cuts lapsed at midnight last night. Every R voting for Senate bill is cutting taxes and keeping his/her pledge.”

Interviewed on MSNBC by a dumbfounded Andrea Mitchell, she offered a more realistic assessment:

“Wait a second,” Mitchell interjected with a laugh. “We’re not living in the Alice in Wonderland world here. There is a tax increase for wealthy Americans. It’s literally a tax increase. Rates are up.”

Earlier, Grover had tweeted:

“We had an election Boehner was elected speaker. Now lame duck obama should get over it.”

Oh, Grover, you quack us up. The Rethugs regained control of the House despite receiving less votes than the totality of Democratic reps nationwide, thanks to the 2010 census and some heavily biased redistricting shenanigans.

That sound you’re hearing is the cement shoes hardening around your feet as history awaits your plunge into the primordial D.C. tidewaters. Future generations might find it necessary to re-drain the Washington swamp, at which time your rotted corpse will surface and serve as a time capsule embodying the worst of the Greed is Good ethos that has done so much to corrupt the US government.

Bon voyage, you selfish prick. And may the Ancients of Days judge you divinely.

Insane Repugs We Have Known, UPDATE: The more things change, the more they are exactly the f*cking same

Here in no particular order, are some of our all-time favorite Insane Repugs, depicted in our favorite way:

O, The Boner, & FDR

TehBoner2 againPlan B Boner has a sad

The only thing preventing President Obama from once again becoming a pariah among progressives is the Teabagger python that squeezes the GOP harder every time it even contemplates the word “compromise.”

In the latest round of budget negotiations, Obama has broken his campaign promises to:

1. Exempt the first $250k of everyone’s income a slight rise in taxes, back tothe rates that prevailed during the go-go years of the Clinton Administration. Instead, he raised the threshold to $400k, reducing government revenues by $300 billion in the process.

2. Hold discretionary budget cuts to $1 trillion. Instead, he added another $300 billion in order to pay for the loss of revenues above.

3. Keep Social Security off the table. Agreeing to cut cost of living increases by adopting a “chained CPI” accounting formula. As Jane Hamsher at The Lake explains, no one should be surprised by Obama’s willingness to “adjust” SS benefits, despite what he said during the campaign, given his track record on the subject.

Add to that the additional $1.5 trillions of cuts Obama agreed to in 2011, and Obama has offered to cut the budget a whopping $2.8 trillion. You’d think that the Rethugs would have jumped at the chance to reduce the size of government by the largest amount in history. Then again, they and their billionaire sponsors are far more interested in individual tax cuts than reducing the debt, as the last 20 years of Republican administrations have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Which brings us to the latest riot in the asylum known as the House of Representatives. Unable to muster any support whatsoever for Obama’s latest capitulation negotiation, Speaker of the House John Boehner instead hatched his own plan he named “Plan B.” (Plan Boner? Plan Bourbon? Plan Bust?) The Boner Plan did finally accept an increase in income taxes, but only on the uber rich, i.e. the top .2%. Blowing past the 250k and 450k thresholds, he raised it to $1 million, starving the government of revenues even more, without even mentioning off-setting budget cuts, let alone specifying which ones. [Edit/Update: ThinkProgress has a side by side comparison here.]

Boehner was under no illusion that it would ever pass the Senate, let alone survive a veto by the president. Thus it was a strictly political maneuver, probably meant to signal that he could deliver his caucus despite the caterwauling from his wingnut right. He went before the cameras, speaking confidently that he had enough votes for passage. He could thus leave town for the holidays, the ball in the president’s court.

Unfortunately for The Orange Man, he can’t count, can’t count on his own party to back his play. (Why he thought the no-tax-at-any-cost-crowd would all fall on their swords in a futile gesture is beyond me.) At the last minute, he pulled the bill from the floor, admitting that he didn’t have the votes. Hand that man an exploding ceegar…

How Washington has become so utterly paralyzed is detailed by Robert Ornstein (American Enterprise Institute) and Thomas Mann (Brookings Institute) in their book “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism.”  They continue their analysis in a recent WAPO op-ed “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem“:

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

Something that’s been obvious to progressives for decades seems to be finally seeping into the sclerotic brains of The Beltway Village People. Here’s what Ornstein and Mann say about the enabling contributions of The Fourth Estate, who have fully internalized the fallacy of false equivalency:

“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.

Conservative ideology itself plays a substantial role in the dysfunctionality that has turned the US government into a chaotic three ring circus that has the rest of the civilized world shaking their heads in disbelief:MORE. . .“O, The Boner, & FDR”

Listen…

“If there’s even one step we can take to save one child, or one parent, or one town from the grief that has visited Tucson, and Aurora and Oak Creek and Newtown and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that, then surely we have an obligation to try. “In the coming weeks, I’ll use whatever power this office holds to …